"My one and only, thank you for the music": Singer Yishai Levi laid to rest

Thousands arrived today, Sunday, at the cemetery in Rosh HaAyin to pay their final respects to Yishai Levi, one of the greats of Mediterranean music, who died overnight at the age of 63. In addition to Levi’s family members, the ceremony was attended by singers Eyal Golan, Kobi Peretz, Dudu Aharon, Haim Moshe, Tamir Gal, Ron Shובל, Itay Levi, Shimon Buskila, Lior Narkis and Bar Tzabari, as well as radio host Didi Harari.

"How many women are lucky enough to work with the love of their life?" his wife Iris eulogized him. "There are loves that happen once in a lifetime, and there are loves that people live for. I was the tree you leaned on, but you were the roots. You were the silence within me, you have the biggest and strongest heart I know, it kept us from falling. You will continue to live forever for people in songs, and you will continue to live forever within me."

"You are one of a kind, my one and only," she added. "We were together for 40 years. Not everything was roses, but we overcame and grew, and everything only brought us closer and strengthened us and magnified our love. It will never end. I never saw anyone else, I saw you before me, before my children, who paid a heavy price, but they respected you, they honor you, they cared for you, and here I won. May you rest in peace."

"No father and daughter in the world have a bond like mine and yours," his daughter Bat-El eulogized him. "We fought together all these years. You were the love of my life. You were a good father, childish, funny. You were a person incapable of hurting. You were all heart. I love you. May you rest in peace."

His daughter Meitar said goodbye: "Music is not an ordinary language. It is the repair of souls. You were chosen to repair and bring joy to souls, to heal. I know who you were and what you managed to do in life and even now. I take one of your songs, every word of yours, as a prayer."

"I woke up to a terrible morning. I am writing to you and I cannot believe it," singer Bar Tzabari eulogized him. "A man I learned so much from about singing, many times I thought in my own work about how you would sing, how you would perform. It breaks my heart that you are not here. Thank you for who you were to me, Yishai, thank you for the music. You were a true warrior and you beat life. Thank you for what you did for music in the State of Israel."

"Iris and the dear children, how do you eulogize such a loss? A special, sharp, intelligent man," Didi Harari eulogized him. "Beyond the songs, there is Yishai the person, who gives respect to the Hebrew language, who speaks as an equal. I had many conversations with Yishai. He said even in his lifetime, 'Give a person respect.' May his soul be bound up in the bond of life. We will hear him, we will sing him, a person does not die as long as people think of him and hear him. His soul and his wisdom will remain with him."

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